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Inside the Episode

Inside this episode, Brian shares his experience going from Sergeant Major in the Army to learning and becoming CEO of a $40M data services company over an 18-month period.

About the Guest

Brian O’Keefe is CEO of Vertical Knowledge (VK), a data products, insights, and intelligence company. VK gives data-savvy organizations across all sectors the ability to collect, refine, and apply publicly available data to solve problems, make decisions, and gain advantage.

Topics by Timestamp

0:00 Kanhai Introduces Brian

1:18 Brian Explains What Vertical Knowledge (VK) Does and Who it serves (VK)

1:56 Understanding Who is And Isn’t a VK Customer

3:56 Overview of Public Data That VK Collects

5:17 Key Success Factors in Public Data Collection

14:29 Why PE said yes to an unproven CEO

16:39 Learned the business from the ground up in 6-9 months.

22:33 Restructuring VK – Why, How, and Lessons Learned

33:41 Brian’s hindsight on addressing technical debt vs. premature optimization, using the P&L to make better decisions, and the CEO retaining accountability for results.

40:15 Strategies for scaling up, from $40M